I'll take mine on the rocks

After several sessions in the gym this week and running our attention turned back to the river this weekend.

Marsport had loaned us a new Condor K2 in bright red! the construction was heavier than ours but we felt that would add to the training effect.....

Saturday we took the red arrow up river to Mapledurham and back doing a couple of loops of the islands below Caversham Bridge, we had a pretty good run and were pleased with the session.

Sunday morning we had elected to do a section of the canal from Colthorpe to the Thames and heading back up to the club. As we approached Colthorpe Matt's car indicated we were still at -5 C and after finding the canal access through an industrial estate found the canal frozen over, the water bailiff arrived and suggested we head downstream at least a mile or so to leave the ice behind.

We eventually reached our usual launch site at Aldermaston and launched there, barely had we passed the first lock the fun started with teh ice which was almost blocking the canal, with care we broke our way around the edge and made the next lock, beneath this lock however we found ourselves stuck fast, we left the boat by scrambling over a frozen reed bed and eventually hauled the boat ashore and we jogged downstream until the next lock. This pattern carried on for a couple of locks.

As our wake reached the bank in places you could hear the ice cracking alongside the banks of the canal.

Eventually after the M4 bridge we hit a larger section of ice having just passed some DW lookalikes heading upstream, we were cutting the corner as the rounded the bend but Matt soon had the boat back on our side of the road!

We finished what was a very difficult haul upstream section on the Thames in just over 2hours and 10 minutes, which we did not consider too bad as we had been hauling ourselves along the bank through the ice.

One week today as I type we will have finished our first proper race the Waterside 1 race, report to follow.

Simon Jeffs has come up trumps again with the loan of more kit for the race some twenty odd drinking bottles and other must have gadgets. Debbie was with me this afternoon and we now have a full set of OS maps for the course length.

Our devoted support crew are off on Tuesday to drive the length of the canal to see it for themselves for the first time.

We are hoping that our boat is back in time repaired for the weekend.